The BCCI did nothing to stop such activities despite their having been brought to its notice, including by its own paid executives. Far from taking decisive action, Mr Srinivasan tried to fob off Gurunath Meiyappan’s role in the Chennai Super Kings dugout as that of a mere “cricket enthusiast,” a subterfuge the Mudgal and Lodha committees saw through pretty easily.
In repeatedly defying the top court of the country and once sheepishly apologising to it for attending and chairing meetings of BCCI he was specifically barred from, the displaced BCCI president only made things worse legally for the game and the organisation he was heading but also steered the IPL and BCCI on a perilous confrontational course with the highest legal authority of the land. For close to two years all the cricket board did was to defend the indefensible in trying to insist that Mr Srinivasan must head it.
Post the verdict of the Lodha committee, not even a fig leaf of morality remains. For Mr Srinivasan to continue to head the ICC In such a situation is worse than seeing Sepp Blatter cling on to the office of FIFA president. Having allowed the game to be corrupted by various commercial influences, the president did nothing to act against such insidious actions as owners betting on games and sometimes placing bets against their own teams adding sinister elements to such activities, which are also anti-national as the betting racket is controlled by mafias owing allegiance to Dawood Ibrahim’s D-company.
Mr Srinivasan is not expected to be his son-in-law’s keeper. Nor can he be held responsible for his son-in-law’s illegal betting actions. But the least he should have ensured is they did not affect his team after having handed it over Gurunath as if it were a plaything. To pretend he was not ‘Team Principal’ was one of the principal reasons why the BCCI was hauled over the coals in its costly legal battles. People have been cashiered for doing much lea harm to the cricket board.
What the BCCI does now with the quantum of punishment decided upon by the trio of top court judges is not subject to Mr Srinivasan’s influence. All the more reason why it must accept the judgment gracefully and aim to take corrective steps to resuscitate IPL-9 and run it as an eight-team league with no place for those who acted with criminal irresponsibility towards the game and the IPL.
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the finance minister Arun Jaitley and the ruling party chief Amit Shah have all been associated with cricket as presidents of state associations. They must intervene now through their party member and secretary BCCI, Anurag Thakur, who is also the virtual head of the cricket board as its president Jagmohan Dalmiya is not in the best of health and unable to play an active role, to set matters right.
Mr Srinivasan has very predictably said that the verdict is not against him personally, which means that he intends to stick to his ICC post. And India Cements, former owner of CSK, has already said it would approach the top court for relief. Any appeal for legal redress is a right no one can be denied. But it is time that the BCCI pushed on with plans to go ahead without the two franchises whose owners have brought the game into disrepute.
